I’ve had so many identity crises concerning my online persona I can’t even begin to tell you about them without worrying about boring you to death. I love to journal, I love to share, end of story.

I can’t promise you that I will always be that short and sweet about everything.

I’ve had an idea in my head about how I wanted my blog to look for a while.

Now that I’ve got more time on my hands (read: I’m self-employed as I took personal leave from the public service to chase my heart to Toronto), I sat down and planned my website. I planned categories and the words I’d use to describe myself and my work. I let that stew for a while and spent countless nights (my sleeping schedule is a bit off) daydreaming about the posts I would write.

I dusted off my sketchbook and drew a logo. I then scanned that and digitized it into my first digital logo ever.

I knew that I wanted a logo in my handwriting, and I wanted the “o” to be something. First I thought perhaps camera lens, but my photography is only one small part of what I want to express here. Other ideas included: a cherry (to represent love of food and my favourite colour), a ball of yarn (cause I love to knit and crochet), a button (for my love of sewing), a ring (cause I want to make more jewelery), the earth (because of my concern for politics and environment), and a music note (because I love to sing and want to learn to play piano).

I settled on a pink balloon for a reason I’ll tell you about later. I promise. Please wait in excited anticipation.

I’ve kept all of my old posts (and all of the comments that mean so much to me) and I plan on re-releasing the worthwhile ones with updates and commentary.

But I needed a start from zero.

I’ve also started from zero in other places as well. And I’m easily filling up others. I’m in love with all sorts of online communities and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how I’d like to engage with each of them. I have a series of posts queued up where I discuss my favourite web tools, but to whet your whistle I’ll tell you this: I want to create diverse conversations in a number of places and I think a lot about security of my information and of the privacy of those I interact with. Still a work in progress:

• twitter.com/herrealworld/ is a micro-blog that often discusses navel lint, coffee, and my cats
• twitter.com/melanie_ching/ is an experiment where I separate navel lint from more “professional” endeavors and I’ve long been an advocate of the professional and the personal being, so I’m sure I’ll rant about that in the future
• flickr.com/herrealworld/ has been purged and I’m starting to share less photos with more detail and a means by which I can explore the world of the Creative Commons
• herrealworld.posterous.com/ is where photos from my iPhone hang out as Tweetie has lovely integration for that sort of thing
• herrealworld.tumblr.com/ is a repository for all things on the Internet that I find most interesting
• herrecipebox.tumblr.com/ is where I put all the recipes that I’d like to cook someday
• hercraftstash.tumblr.com/ is the place where all of my crafting inspirations hang out
• herdreamhome.tumblr.com/ is filled with fanciful dreams for the house I will build on an unlimited budget
• vimeo.com/herrealworld/ has a few photo projects and will have much more soon
• facebook.com/herrealworld/ (page) is my public facing Facebook zone that I will describe in detail soon…until then, become a fan! There will be benefits!

I think I’ve carried on long enough. I never know how to sign off on these things. Should I say goodbye? Farewell? Till next time? How about:

fin